Somewhat like the libretto of a cantata, it is a series of lyric moods, called forth by conflicting interests or desires, and moving in music to a firm lyric situation, which latter embodies the underlying purpose of the whole. Thus, while not unobservant of dramatic concatenation, its parts remain true to the dictum later laid down by Milton that a living poem should be "simple, sensuous, impassioned." It lets the passion of pure and invincible love sing its own story. A main difficulty in forming a consistent concept of this Song of Songs is in getting at a clear situation out of which its elusive opulence of imagery and ardor may A Fitly Conceived be evolved. For such situation the sentiment and atmosphere of King Solomon's court, realized or assumed, was evidently in the mind of the author. Was there something there, recorded or intimated, from which his creative genius could derive the tissue of his lyric story? The Hebrew mind, with its strong sense of realism, did not take kindly to pure fiction; it sought some peg of fact or of old-time tradition on which to hang its poem or story or discourse. Can such a concrete support be discerned under the verbal splendors of this Song of Songs?

Situation

I think a very suggestive one can be cited. It is contained in the story of Abishag the Shunammite, who as a choicely selected maiden ministered to King David in his extreme old age (1 Kings i, 1-4), and who after his death was desired, to his undoing, by Adonijah, Solomon's ambitious elder brother (1 Kings ii, 13-25). There is nothing in the story thus far to supply substance for the song cycle, but there is something out of which such a healthy ideal as prevails in the song could naturally evolve it. If we add to the Abishag episode the thought of her earlier plighted love, and the equally probable thought that the amorous young king, after Adonijah's death, may have desired her -as the Oriental custom permitted for his harem, we have all the factual suggestion needed for the situation of

It is not without significance that these Megilloth, or little classics, should have come to be associated, as by a natural In Literary affinity, with the unprescribed observances of the Appreciation feasts. They too, in a sense not so true of other Scripture, are literary works in which the free Hebrew mind has let itself go. Written neither in criticism nor in propaganda, they have not the fear of orthodoxy nor the awe of mystic revelation before their eyes. They represent the thoughts and sentiments in which the popular mind can take pleasure or find itself reflected, without reference to the big monitions of priest or prophet. Perhaps that is why three of these books, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, did not attain to a confirmed status in the canon until late and after much hesitation of estimate. They were, in a word, literary works that gave free rein to the sincerest thought and feeling, letting the question of official sanction take care of itself. If the canon was eventually liberal enough to include them, so much the more hospitable and tolerant the canon.

Nor should we fail to note here the variety and the artistic quality observable in these works. All the leading Hebrew types of literary workmanship -song, idyl, elegy, mashal, plotted story are in turn represented, each by what may be called a cabinet masterpiece, a specimen of finished literature in its kind. This fact does not look fortuitous. It is as if the Hebrew literature, proudly conscious of itself, were minded to come out from its ancient seclusion and measure itself by the standards of the world.1 It was in a ripened and highly cultured period that this final section of the Old Testament was made up, a period wherein the most influential literature in the world was its rival. We do well to give this fact its due among the Hebrew men of letters in whose care were the uniquely educated people of a book.

1 Cf. p. 431, above,

II

Traits of the Individual Books. The choice and finished literary form observable in these Megilloth connotes something quite other than pride of verbal or structural artistry. It is in its finely wrought way a reflection of the soul within. One may apply to it Spenser's words,

For of the soule the bodie forme doth take;

For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.

True as this is of all well-meant literature, we seem to recognize it more as in form and phrase the piece is more carefully molded. It is dealing with a finer, more penetrative thrust of truth. This, I think, can be said of the works now under consideration. One discerns in each of them not so much a great mass or landmark of Biblical disclosure as a kind of cabinet piece, something clarifying, corrective, some view that makes for the true balance and perspective of things. There is about them a certain intimacy of spiritual relation, a tribute not only to the new and cogent but to the wholesome and familiar. Hence the value accorded to them in the observances of the festival seasons.

Two of the five Megilloth, the Song of Songs and the Book of Ruth, have been in part discussed in the preceding chapters. They must needs come up again, however, in their canonical order, for the sake of their respective contributions to the treasury of Hebrew classics.

tata of the

1. In "The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's " a notable departure is made from the lines of thought and Song of sentiment conventionally deemed Scriptural, Songs: Can- whether to the help or hurt of sacred values has been a much-vexed question. It is the only Scripture book that deals with the human passion of love, the love of the sexes for each other, that pervasive theme without which modern romance could hardly exist,

Awakening

of Love

yet which religious asceticism and sanctimony have viewed askance as if it were a thing to be apologized for. As such it sounds at first reading like a literary interloper. The tone of the book is so richly Oriental and sensuous that both it and the Bible which sponsors it are placed as it were on trial, it for its frank disregard of the ascetic and prudish, the Bible for its warm hospitality to diverse works. Such has always been the book's equivocal fortune, which scholars have tried to adjust by giving it allegorical and esoteric meanings both Jewish and Christian. With these we need not concern ourselves here, at least until we have seen what simpler suggestion lies in the rich imagery and description of the poem. We may find, indeed, that the Bible, with its liberality of inclusion makes room therein for what is at once the most primal and the most sacred relation in life.

NOTE. The Song of Songs as the supposed chef d'œuvre of the Solomonic school of lyric poetry, and its relative purity of sentiment as compared with that of other Oriental literature, is spoken of on page 88, above. This early introduction of the poem does not imply an early date of composition or Solomonic authorship; these depend upon quite

other considerations.

Type and

The tissue of the book, as the title intimates, is superlatively lyric, the loftiest reach of Hebrew song. It is the Its Literary lyric mood, with its singleness and intensity of emotional states, that is throughout the controlShaping ling element. All along, however, a quasidramatic element supervenes, a suggestion of scene and personation, which tempts the reader to search for a coördinated plot but with elusive results. To make a built drama of it, or even something analogous to an Elizabethan masque, calls for too much artifice of interpretation; it does not justify itself against the next expositor. The Hebrew genius, at its freest in the impassioned lyric, was lame and clumsy in the dramatic; the Book of Job has to some extent evinced that. We can, however, call the book before us a lyric cycle.

Somewhat like the libretto of a cantata, it is a series of lyric moods, called forth by conflicting interests or desires, and moving in music to a firm lyric situation, which latter embodies the underlying purpose of the whole. Thus, while not unobservant of dramatic concatenation, its parts remain true to the dictum later laid down by Milton that a living poem should be "simple, sensuous, impassioned." It lets the passion of pure and invincible love sing its own story. A main difficulty in forming a consistent concept of this Song of Songs is in getting at a clear situation out of which its elusive opulence of imagery and ardor may A Fitly Conceived be evolved. For such situation the sentiment and Situation atmosphere of King Solomon's court, realized or assumed, was evidently in the mind of the author. Was there something there, recorded or intimated, from which his creative genius could derive the tissue of his lyric story? The Hebrew mind, with its strong sense of realism, did not take kindly to pure fiction; it sought some peg of fact or of old-time tradition on which to hang its poem or story or discourse. Can such a concrete support be discerned under the verbal splendors of this Song of Songs?

I think a very suggestive one can be cited. It is contained in the story of Abishag the Shunammite, who as a choicely selected maiden ministered to King David in his extreme old age (1 Kings i, 1-4), and who after his death was desired, to his undoing, by Adonijah, Solomon's ambitious elder brother (1 Kings ii, 13-25). There is nothing in the story thus far to supply substance for the song cycle, but there is something out of which such a healthy ideal as prevails in the song could naturally evolve it. If we add to the Abishag episode the thought of her earlier plighted love, and the equally probable thought that the amorous young king, after Adonijah's death, may have desired her as the Oriental custom permitted for his harem, we have all the factual suggestion needed for the situation of